January 11, 2008

A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband, and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary....

The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement — an aide later said she misspoke — to Bill Clinton dismissing Sen. Barack Obama’s image in the media as a “fairy tale” — generated outrage on black radio, black blogs and cable television. And now they've drawn the attention of prominent African-American politicians....

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., through a spokesman, [said:] "Following Barack Obama's victory in Iowa and historic voter turnout in New Hampshire, the cynics unfortunately have stepped up their efforts to decry his uplifting message of hope and fundamental change...."...

Thursday, a key player in black South Carolina politics, Rep. Jim Clyburn, told The New York Times he’d consider endorsing Obama in response to what he considered a lack of respect in the Clinton campaign’s approach to Obama.

“For him to go after Obama, using a ‘fairy tale,’ calling him as he did last week. It's an insult. And I will tell you, as an African-American, I find his tone and his words to be very depressing,” said Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton ally who is neutral in this race, on CNN earlier this week.

Of course, Obama supporters have a motivation to characterize things as racial that are not, and the Clinton campaign must be frustrated that it's hard to attack Obama, who seems to be getting a free pass. But I don't doubt that the Clintons will use whatever works for them. Insinuations — and even slip-ups — don't work, however, when so many people are so ready to detect racial content. So that is a safeguard against the Clintons stirring up racial prejudice against Obama.

"It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war," Clinton said during the rally. He suggested Obama had moderated his anti-war stance during his 2004 Senate campaign.

Clinton told Sharpton the "fairy tale" remark was only intended to describe Obama's claim to have exercised better judgment about the war, and was not intended as a sign of "personal disrespect."

IN THE COMMENTS: Jeremy said:

The Clintons are nothing if not calculated. Could it be that they're trying to draw out the Sharpton/Jackson crowd? I think Barak has done really well without "Black Leadership's" prominent endorsement. That endorsement seems like it'd be a big turn off to a lot of white voters. Maybe the Clintons want the Sharpton/Jacksons to make some noise?

78 comments:

"Fairy tale"? Maybe I'm getting my prejudices mixed up, but that seems more homophobic than racist to me. And you have to admit, Obama does gesture a lot when speaking, and his wrists aren't always as stiff as they could be....

Clearly the Democratic Party needs to do away with primaries altogether, since identity politics is more important to Democrats than anything else. Let's see, in election years ending in 0 and 4, only minority-race candidates may run. In election years ending in 2 and 6, only women may run. Election years ending in 8 are for the gay/lesbian/transgendered candidates.

Tough luck for John Edwards, but white men are still permitted to vote for Democrats, and he should simply be grateful for that privilege.

Man this is beautiful. Liberal White folks being worked over like this. Grovel away whitey!

Clinton goes on Tawana Sharpton's radio show to kiss his bigoted black ass!!

The black load mouths who are attempting to punk out the Clinton's will use anything as an excuse to support Obama over her. They have wanted to support Obama all along for one reason. He's black.

Now they can cover themselves by saying well I would have supported Hillary but after those "Lynch the Black Fairy" comments I now think they are racist rednecks just like all the other White folks so I gotta support Barack.

"...the Clinton campaign must be frustrated that it's hard to attack Obama, who seems to be getting a free pass."

Everyone else is frustrated too. It is hard to attack Hillary clinton, who seems to be getting a free pass from everyone, the media included. She has had no scrutiny and has not been subejct to the same media autospy and microscopic dissection as the other candidates- from both parties.

I think Gloria Steinem was right. White women do have it harder than black men. After all, HRC was forced to go to a segregated school, Wellesley, although somehow she was admitted to Yale Law along with the men. But lucky for her (tee-hee) along with her J.D. she got her M.R.S. degree.

Not that she owes her current status to her husband. I'm sure that even as just plain Hillary Rodham she could have moved to any random state, and been elected Senator.

I'm sorry but I am confused. I don't usually post on the political threads. Isn't the Senator Craig story the fairy tale? Did Obama tap somebody’s shoe in a New Hampshire men’s room? I can't keep these cable stories straight.

You know this for a fact? You have had private converstations with them? You have some proof they are or are not racists?

They may be racists, they may not be racists. They are politicians and will say and do anything to get votes and keep votes. Just because they use nice language and don't wear sheets and hoods is no proof.

Why is it when people like the Clintons say stupid, insulting things a spokesperson comes out and claims they mispoke? OOPS, sorry. Ok, now everything is alright. Let's move on to the issues...

When others say what they mean, there are near riots in the streets, the Sharptons and Jacksons come out of the woodwork like cockaroaches, and livlihoods are lost or they are forced to make humiliating, tearful, soulful, and heart rendering mea culpas on the public altar.

If you are a Clinton you can say and od anything and, hey, it was just a harmless mistake.

The Clintons are nothing if not calculated. Could it be that they're trying to draw out the Sharpton/Jackson crowd? I think Barak has done really well without "Black Leadership's" prominent endorsement. That endorsement seems like it'd be a big turn off to a lot of white voters. Maybe the Clintons want the Sharpton/Jacksons to make some noise?

Many of the golfers in the lily white establishment have made coded remarks about Tiger Woods. They have called clean cut and articulate. Fuzzy Zoeller called him "that little boy" and told him not to order fried chicken or collard greens for dinner if he won the masters. One commenter said the only way to stop him was to lynch him in an alley. However, no one ever called him a fairy, not once, not even one time (wagging finger at camera).

When a Donna Brazile, who shilled of the Clinton's for years, feels that the words of someone she knows well are insensitive and thoughtless and hurtful, then we have another example of identity politics.

Identity Politics affects everyone. To some degree or another, even when we disagree with a candidate on the "issues", we still empathize with the pain and derision that come from crossing-the-line, over-the-top criticism.

Women may not like Hillary, but they understand the feeling of having to work twice as hard to get to the same place as a man. They don't want her ridiculed for what they feel is anything having to do with being a woman.

Republican conservatives are literally at each other's throats (memories of delegate fistfights at the 1952 Republican Convention)this year because the civility towards opposing candidates - Reagan's 11th commandment - has gone out the window. Mike Huckabee, for one example is bitterly and tastelessly characterized as everything from an Elmer Gantry to a clever/stupid Bubba - and that's on conservative blogs! And the same is true for ALL of the other Republican candidates on conservative blogs. I've never seen anything like it.

Now I am not a Huckabee supporter, but I am an evangelical, so I am - identity politics - sensitive to people attacking him for his beliefs . Huckabee's policies and past performance are fair game. But just yesterday, on one of the top 5 conservative blogs, a commenter not only claimed Huckabee was not conservative, but all evangelicals are inbred rednecks. There are also many other anti-evangelical comments on that blog. And I don't like it at all.

"Well, I think its regrettable because both of these accusations are baseless and divisive and any fair reading of what both of us said would be clear and I think it's regrettable that these are being in a way used to try to divide people in our country during this election and I'm not going to have any part of it," Clinton told ABC News. "I personally find it offensive."

"You know," she continued, "I was inspired by Dr. King when I was a young girl. I considered him one of my heroes, a global symbol, an icon of everything that is the best about America and he worked his entire life to make the changes that we enjoy today so I hope that this kind of unfortunate political activity really just ceases because I don't think this is what we want this election to be about."

Clinton made her comments to ABC's Eloise Harper while campaigning in East Los Angeles, Calif. She was asked if comments she made about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and remarks her husband made about Obama receiving "fairy-tale" treatment from the press might hurt her standing with African Americans.

Bill isn't racist. According, to Andrew Young he's been out with more Black women than Tiger Woods or Obama. Toni Morrison likes him, she's black AND a Nobel Prize winner.And he has an office in Harlem.

Barack Obama's secret identity is that he is T'Challa a prince of an African royal family that has come to America to free his people. Of course he doesn't want his secret identity to be known as he was called the "Black Panther." It has some unfortunate connotations don't ya know.

This is a slight tangent, but I'm just watching Washington Week and they're all saying how no one saw Clinton winning New Hampshire before it happened, but I'd like to point out that that's not true. I said that "[s]he'll win New Hampshire and go on to win the nomination. Sanity will prevail." It did and will. Are we seeing an ugly racist edge to clinton's campaign? Obama's supporters and shills must be getting pretty desparate to play that card.

Mike Huckabee, for one example is bitterly and tastelessly characterized as everything from an Elmer Gantry to a clever/stupid Bubba - and that's on conservative blogs!

The reason so many conservatives can't stand Mike Huckabee is that he's a liberal on most of the non-religious issues conservatives care about. I don't think Reagan meant his 11th commandment to apply to RINOs.

But just yesterday, on one of the top 5 conservative blogs, a commenter not only claimed Huckabee was not conservative, but all evangelicals are inbred rednecks.

That's obviously an unfair and bigoted thing to say. However, I do think that a lot of conservatives are frustrated by the fact that much of Huckabee's support seems to be based not on his qualifications, his record, or his policies, but on the fact that he's an evangelical. Thompson, for example, is a far more credible conservative and is at least as solid on social issues as Huckabee is, but he is way behind Huckabee in the polls. Are so many evangelicals supporting Huckabee over him (a) out of ignorance, (b) because they aren't really conservatives themselves, or (c) because the fact that he's evangelical trumps his actual politics? No matter what the answer, criticism of his evangelical supporters seems deserved.

Unfortunately, I think the (in my opinion fair) statement "Huckabee's evangelical supporters are a bunch of ignoramuses and religious nuts" does sometimes get unfairly broadened to "evangelicals are a bunch of ignoramuses and religious nuts", despite the fact that (as far as I can tell) most evangelicals don't actually support Huckabee.

Now Bill Richardson's secret identity politics is that he is in fact the Penguin. He got that when he was playing baseball, but unfortunately for him it was the Goose and not the Penguin that had the big career.

I've heard several black women go off on Bill and/or Hill since his remarks. I think Bill forgot that the designation, "Our first black president" was an honorific. Justin Timber Lake was an honorary black singer till he let Janet Jackson hang by herself for her boob moment in the Super Bowl. He found out how meaningless an honorary title is just like Bill is soon to do if he keeps it up.

Well at one level Obama's schtick certainly is a "fairy tale". He wears the mantle of change, claiming that he can wave his magic wand and Washington will be transformed from political bickering to total buy-in for his conventional liberal agenda.

caplight said...I've heard several black women go off on Bill and/or Hill since his remarks. I think Bill forgot that the designation, "Our first black president" was an honorific.

Bill Clinton was "socially constructed" as "black" in the black imagination when he was being attacked by other "white" people.

He reverts to being a True White Man when he dares to challenge a black man in any way whatsoever.

Hence his critique of the (White) media's "fairytale" treatment of Jesus 2.0 makes him a threat to the black collective ego which demands to be seen in this worshipful light through the presence of Barack Obama.

Plus, given the choice between a black male and a White women the "sisters" will side with "the brother" 99% of the time. See the O.J. Simpson trial.

I'm an evangelical (nice bona fides, by the way, B that you mentioned in the earlier thread) and I don't like Huckabee precisely because I think he's using identity politics himself to garner votes. He's playing up the identity as an Evangelical leader that brings him votes from that side by seeming like 'one of us' and by the persecution mentality that takes all attacks against him as attacks on his faith.

He went into politics by means of rising in popularity through ministry, so of course I'm going to hit him on those identity politics he's using. I think he's the kind of person who will say whatever people before him want to hear, and because of his original setting he used Evangelicals to give him his launch. He's not trustworthy as a conservative, nor as an Evangelical in my mind, an Elmer Gantry without the moral foibles, but with the same misplaced motives.

The Drill SGT said... Well at one level Obama's schtick certainly is a "fairy tale". He wears the mantle of change, claiming that he can wave his magic wand and Washington will be transformed from political bickering to total buy-in for his conventional liberal agenda.

I saw nothing wrong with Bill Clinton's statement. He was talking about the virtual pass the lightweight junior senator from Illinois has received thus far. Quite simply, his rhetoric doesn't match his record, and there's not much of that. Pretending it does is engaging in imaginary thinking, or fairy tales, if you like. (Or even if you don't.)

As for the other idiot talking about the well-to-do wanting an imaginary black friend, Karl Rove said it better, and without the racial tinge, earlier this week: the white wine crowd is supporting Obama and the beer crowd are supporting Clinton. There are more beer drinkers than white wine sippers.

As blacks are probably the single largest voting bloc within the Democratic Party, who they vote for is of paramount importance. In South Carolina, blacks comprise 29% of the population, but almost half of the Democrats there. As climbing all over Bill Clinton for his remark shows, a lot of this back-and-forth about race is just politics-as-usual.

Of course, Obama is supposed to be beyond politics-as-usual. If his feelings really are hurt by Bill Clinton's fairy tale line then he's less ready-for-prime-time than I thought.

How did Hillary get a pass after she exposed herself as someone lacking even the most basic knowledge about the Pakistan system of government in the wake of Bhutto's assasination? Talk about not ready for prime time. Oh wait, she has the Clinton last name, so she's royalty and automatically deserves the right to rule us.

Oh wait, she has the Clinton last name, so she's royalty and automatically deserves the right to rule us.

I doubt people who believe that make up a large percentage of the electorate or her supporters. Probably about the same number who think since Giuliani was Mayor on 9/11 he should be President now, or its Edwards' turn because he paid his dues running for VP, or John McCain because he's been around so long (ala Bob Dole), or Thompson because he made such a great DA on TV.

Mortimer, wake and smell the coffee! Surely you don't believe that there is nothing calculated about this response and the attendant publicity, days before the next primary, where blacks make up almost half the voters and thus far continue to give significant support to Clinton? Surely the Clintons are not the only politicians today who are cold and calculating?

Up to now, Obama has kept his distance from the race-baiters and the professional victims. If he wants to let them run on and on with silly twaddle like this about Bill Clinton's remarks, that's his business. It will probably get him votes in South Carolina but it may also damage him in the long run.

Due to his strong support in the African-American community, some have cleverly referred to former President Bill Clinton as America's "first black president." Blacks also view his wife Hillary Clinton positively, with 84% rating her favorably and only 10% unfavorably.

If she has an 84% !! approval rating among blacks, what is his rating? !

I doubt people who believe that make up a large percentage of the electorate or her supporters.

Oh, I think it should be one of the central concerns of the state of our democracy at the present time. Two families running the executive branch since 1989. Apparently the American people have begun thinking someone deserves to rule just because of their last name. Unless you think it's so hard to find anyone else with a last name other than Clinton or Bush out of a population of 300 million.

If Hillary Clinton had something really great going for her, I might look past all this for one election. But there's nothing special that she offers. She's a front-runner because she married Bill. She's also a crook and a phoney and generally the lowest class of politician.

Surely you don't believe that there is nothing calculated about this response and the attendant publicity, days before the next primary, where blacks make up almost half the voters and thus far continue to give significant support to Clinton?

I don't see how Obama put the Clinton adviser's quotation in the Guardian, a foreign paper. Nor do I understand how Obama made Hillary Clinton make the MLK comments in a Fox News interview with Major Garrett. Nor did Obama cause Bill Clinton to make the fiarytale comments. I just don't understand how that shows calculation on Obama's part. These comments are one-way and outside of anyone's control but the Clintons. I would note that Bill Clinton called Al Sharpton to discuss the matter, not the other way around, and that Sharpton hasn't endorsed anyone yet. Bill may have been vying for Sharpton's endorsement. Indeed, Sharpton says "I am still considering" during the interview.

Randy (Internet Ronin) said... I saw nothing wrong with Bill Clinton's statement. He was talking about the virtual pass the lightweight junior senator from Illinois has received thus far. Quite simply, his rhetoric doesn't match his record, and there's not much of that. Pretending it does is engaging in imaginary thinking, or fairy tales, if you like. (Or even if you don't.)

Does Hillary's record match her rhetoric? Is there much of a record on her? Is'nt she just a light weight senaotr from New York? Lastly, hasn't Hillary gotten a virtual pass? Ptretending that Hillary has a record is engaging in imaginary thinking and fairy tales... more like pipe dreams.

Actually, yes. Hillary and Obama both mean to take things away from you for the common good. The difference is that she will (and has) look you in the eye and say "we're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" while Obama will waffle vaguely about hope, optimism, change and insist that if we weren't so insistent on having beliefs of our own we wouldn't be divided any more.

That is, Hillary says we're going to take things from you because it's necessary for the public good. Obama means the same thing, but he insists that we're one nation, so there is no we, there is no you, so really, you're taking your own money and giving it to yourself. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Simon said...JackDRipper said..."Obama is going to CRUSH Hillary in S.C."

Substitute "N.H." for "S.C." and you've got exactly what the conventional wisdom was insisting last week.

I'm not conventional wisdom and after watching Obama lose 63%!!!! of the vote in Iowa I wasn't calling it a landslide/juggernaut/historic etc.

The difference between N.H. and S.C. is that S.C. has a 50% BLACK Democratic primary registration.

Any White people who think black women are going to side with the White woman over the "brother" are like those white folks who thought the mostly black female jury was going to find O.J. guilty because of their outage at domestic violence toward women.

Obama will get over 50% of the vote with Hillary and Edwards splitting the rest.

JackDRipper said..."Any White people who think black women are going to side with the White woman over the "brother" are like those white folks who thought the mostly black female jury was going to find O.J. guilty because of their outage at domestic violence toward women."

I'm not willing to assume bad faith on their part. Why would you assume that black voters are willing to be assigned political views - still less candidate preference - based on race? No one ought to be voting for or against Obama or Hillary because of - of all things! - his race or her gender. It's like voting for someone based on whether they're a cat person or a dog person.

Mortimer Brezny said..."How is that playing the race card?"

I don't know if it's playing the "race" card as such, but it's clearly implying that she wasn't troubled with what happened in Louisiana. It's more playing the "indifference" card.

Simon said...I'm not willing to assume bad faith on their part. Why would you assume that black voters are willing to be assigned political views - still less candidate preference - based on race? No one ought to be voting for or against Obama or Hillary because of - of all things! - his race or her gender. It's like voting for someone based on whether they're a cat person or a dog person.

OK, now back on Planet Earth you need to focus on what people DO not what you think they OUGHT to do.

Check out every place on Earth except where guilty, racially self hating White liberals predominate and you will find tribal/ethnocentric/racial/religious identity and loyalty is the basic form of social identity and it plays a fundamental roll in politics.

You make the mistake so many White Americans make when trying to understand human nature and history. The failure to understand "The Ethnic Phenomenon" is the creationism/flat earth theory of human relations.

What is going on inside Iraq/Turkey/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Kenya is not the fringe weird extreme of human behavior. It's the basic pattern. People are tribal, they identify with their extended kin based on race/ethnicity/tribe/culture and they tend to develop animosity to traitors from their group or to outsiders who show competitive intentions.

Only in the deracinated White West is that considered weird or some kind of sinful mentality that must be purged from one's soul and society.

Simon, I don't get your dislike of Obama, but then again I have my own obsessions so I'm not going to judge. :)

But he doesn't seem any worse than Edwards, and not TOO much worse than Hillary, and he's a good deal less irritating than either one of them. Plus, it'd be kind of nice to have the "we elected a black President" trump card to play on those folks who endlessly whine about how racist America is. It won't shut them up, but at least I can feel smug about it.

... the Clintons can say and do what they want and just expalin it away- out of context, regrettable, baseless, and divisive. ...

Isn't the thrust of this news story to point to the idea that, in fact, they can't just do all that anymore? Precisely given the change in circumstances, over which--and this further point, it strikes me, is being made rather, well, pointedly-they don't get to assume they can wield control anymore.

This may mean we ALL need to reconsider our reflexive memes and prisms, if ya catch my drift ... .

I don't know if Obama's polls are coming in poorly in South Carolina or not, but I'd say that after New Hampshire he's leaving nothing to chance, and he wants all those black South Carolina voters out en masse voting for him. If he gets them he wins, period whether Hillary weeps or not.

Isn't the thrust of this news story to point to the idea that, in fact, they can't just do all that anymore?

Honestly, I truly think that idea is at the heart of the struggle going on internally in parts of the Democrat Party, and it goes a good way to explicating a chunk of what's going on. (That it also has larger implications is important, though not necessarily so immediate. It will become so, however, I believe--and precisely because of who, I believe, is taking the most issue with the Clinton assumptions, and I'm not talking the Sharptons of the world here.)

SORRY!!! The "Democrat" Party in my previous comment TRULY was a typo (as I am not unknown for). I absolutely meant to type DEMOCRATIC PARTY, which is how I do refer to it. Absolutely NO disrespect, much less deeper meaning, intended.

Oh, Mortimer! I mean really. I think you're a nice guy and intelligent too, and then you say something like this. If someone really has to draw you a road map, here's one: Katrina's victims were black and poor. New Hamshire's voters were affluent and white. This type of line has been used over and over again since Katrina for a variety of issues with a similar meaning: He/she cares about X but not about the poor & black.

As to your earlier reply to my comment: Once again, you missed my point. I wasn't talking about the idiot in the Guardian, or Bill Clinton. I was talking about the response, who responded, and who did the hit piece for the paper. Mortimer, in my experience, those kinds of things don't "just happen." Just another in a long tradition of what are termed "October Surprises" in the general election.

Perhaps I have not been clear enough: by "can't" do that anymore, what I mean is that the Clintons, who I do not believe are racists and who can legitimately feel pride at early disavowing racism, can no longer lay claim to being putative leaders of that good fight, in terms of mainstream politics and highest political office. There was a time, quite obviously, when many within the African-American community--generally, and within the political class, at least the Democratic one--felt that the Clintons were indeed just that, or at least as close as could be gotten, under circumstances. And the Clintons got used to that--and why not? It wasn't Bill who described himself as the first black president, nor Hillary.

But time has marched on, and, perhaps, passed by the Clintons, to a degree and particularly in this regard; it seems that the mantle, temporarily placed elsewhere, on loan as it were, is now wanted back, at least in terms of who gets to decide, to confer, to define. In my opinion, this transcends the Obama phenomenon (though that is certainly both proximate and contributory), and, in this sense, is potentially a very healthy harbinger, if not one without pain across the spectrum (including, perhaps especially, for all of the "Clintons"--in this case, I use that designation symbolically--of the world). In short, I suspect it's a shocker, hard to recognize, hard to realize, hard to keep up with, hard to adjust to.

I realize I haven't put this well, or in polished fashion, but so be it. I participate in the blogosphere precisely to think-aloud-in-progress, which by definition is a messy process.

they might not be the most educated beams of light but let me tell you they are people to be reckoned with. don't sell lack of education short. they see the picture from all angles.

That's an interesting comment. I think Clyburn was quite noble to criticize the Clintons in the first place (as the problem was the tone). I think he's right not to endorse any of the three candidates, given how the situation seems to have escalated. I do have to say, though, it looks like it's the Clintons who escalated it. I'm still not sure why. I just don't get it. You don't have to do this stuff to win. I really think Hillary should practice what she preaches: "Politics is not a game. It's about people."

"Blacks also view his wife Hillary Clinton positively, with 84% rating her favorably and only 10% unfavorably."

Blacks vote 80+% Dem year in and year out. This poll, whatever it was and however it was constructed, probably only confirmed that fact. If there's a capital 'D' by the name on the voting form, it gets the nod - no thought required. Too bad, because the Dems have been exploiting Blacks as a group for a very long time.

As for Her Nastiness and the "Politics is not a game. It's about people." statement:

This is typical Clinton rhetoric. It is totally meaningless and allows the listener/reader to attribute whatever shallow personal meaning they are happy with. Apparently it isn't just Black Dems who are conditioned not to think. Same for "It's about the children." - and the list goes on.

Mortimer Brezny said...That's an interesting comment. I think Clyburn was quite noble to criticize the Clintons in the first place (as the problem was the tone).

No, not noble simply racial. Clyburn doesn't want to be seen as a sellout and Uncle Tom to the White folks who run the Democratic party.

Again, what the black grievance crowd is doing is looking to make it easier to kick that old White woman to the curb and support their brother.

They were going to do that all along but it just tastes better to do it with that extra Hate Whitey spite sprinkled in.

They like the sense of both supporting a brother and being pissed off at Whitey at the same time.

While I don't disagree with the Clinton comments, they are essentially true. Nonetheless to make ANY comments that might in any way seem critical or less than worshipful of the black Redeemers MLK and Obama would be like a Republican candidate doing the same about Jesus or Ronald Reagan.